Nixx
By the time I headed back toward the bike, my knee was protesting the crouching and the afternoon heat had sharpened into something metallic. The rational part of my brain catalogued everything I’d learned.
By the time I headed back toward the bike, the investigation finally felt like it had weight behind it. The property was active, the traffic was recent, and Mercer’s fingerprints were starting to appear whether he intended them to or not.
Between the burner phone packaging, the cash receipt, the Hell’s Fire presence, and the secondary route disappearing into the desert, the picture was slowly sharpening into something useful instead of a collection of disconnected guesses.
For the first time in days, it felt like I was actually gaining ground on Reno instead of chasing shadow
